Survey asks sailors and Marines about alcohol use

Navy Times

By Meghann Myers, Staff writer

August 17, 2015

The Navy Department launched its annual alcohol use survey on Aug. 12, hoping to gain some insight on sailors’ and Marines’ drinking behavior, understanding of alcohol abuse and willingness to seek help for a problem.

Now in its third year, 1,400 personnel and their families took the 2014 version, according to a Navy release, which helped the Navy Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention program gauge whether its efforts are working.

“The Keep What You’ve Earned campaign has been shaped by feedback from Sailors and its efforts would not be successful without their input,” said NADAP director Dorice Favorite. “The annual survey allows our office to determine how well alcohol abuse prevention efforts and messages are being delivered across the fleet and shape the following year’s plan to improve those efforts.”

The 25-question, anonymous survey takes just a few minutes to complete and is intended for active-duty sailors, Marines, and their spouses. After entering information about your Navy affiliation, the survey takes you through a series of multiple choice questions.

Types of questions include your drinking and attitudes toward drinking, how you think the Navy handles drinking, whether you are aware of abuse prevention programs and whether you feel empowered to help yourself or someone else with a drinking problem.

Once you’ve included how much you drink in a typical sitting and how often, the questions go deeper.

For example, what do you consider alcohol abuse? Is it more than four drinks at a time? Is it drinking to the point of passing out, or when it interferes with your obligations?

The survey also asks, in general, whether you think the Navy and Marine Corps have a culture of alcohol abuse, and who you think has the biggest influence on the rank and file.

And if you identify a personal problem, who will you reach out to? Possible answers include fellow sailors, family, friends, Navy websites or your chain of command.

Do you think sailors and Marines drink because they’re influenced by their colleagues, or their supervisors, or their families? Do they drink to bond, or to blow off steam, or to self-medicate?

A handful of the questions deal with the Navy’s programs specifically, asking sailors whether they are aware of the Keep What You’ve Earned program, and if you are, where they heard about it.

There are also questions about whether you think the program is effective and if you’ve seen any changes in behavior or attitudes toward drinking in the past year.

“This survey gives us a pulse check on how those attitudes and behaviors have changed in the past year, and how we can continue to develop an innovative strategy to promote responsible drinking,” Favorite said in the release.

To take the survey, visit https://survey.max.gov/167456.